Glass Negatives

Glass Negatives or Postives can be expertly scanned, digitally repaired and transferred to a archival Gold DVD. We can also create a printed version for your archives. See what we have done for other Museums.

What is different about Glass vs Negatives?

Glass negatives tend to flake the image off the glass, which means it needs to be recreated to what it seems was there before. Sometimes it is just a dot missing. Sometimes it is along the edge where it is not critical to the image. These repairs can be made with little loss to the intregity of the historical value. Other repairs may require an artist to recreate what was there before.

Currently, cameras use a plastic of various types with a light sensitive emulsion on the plastic. Silver Nitrate produces a black and white image. Methods were created to produce multicolored emulsions. Manufacturers including Kodak, took this even further with a greater diversity of color. Many photographers use film in 35mm positive format. The latest professional cameras create digital pictures, which if preserved on archival media, can last for over 100 years before requiring them to be transferred to longer lasting media (not yet invented).

Diffcultives incurred with 35mm slides

Most slides are in color. When slides are stored away they can become moldy. Slides stored even in a closet can become moldy, spotted or lose emulsion. Some slides are stored in even less friendly evironments such as garages or storage sheds. It may be years before they are pulled out and looked at again. It can be very expensive to digitally repair these slides when they are so badly damaged. It can be done. It just depends on how much you are willing to pay, or how much time you are willing to spend doing it yourself. Color is monmentally harder to do than black and white which adds to the cost of repair.